In defense of the ISPs, from what I’ve read, Netflix accounts for ~30% of internet traffic. With numbers that high, it’s understandable why the ISPs want to get more money to service those users. A Netflix user is, on average, going to use 40-50% more network than a non-Netflix user. There’s really four options here:
(1) ISPs charge Netflix for bandwidth they consume
(2) ISPs charge Netflix users differently than non Netflix users
(3) All you can consume internet goes away
(4) Non-Netflix users subsidize Netflix users
In a vacuum, #1 is by far the fairest option. But of course, we don’t live in a vacuum. Netflix directly competes with most ISPs offerings, so the ISPs have a vested interest in making Netflix less attractive. I don’t know what the answer is, but I thought I’d point out that ISPs aren’t just making stuff up.
Netflix isn’t just broadcasting into the ether though. They’re 30% of the traffic because the consumers (who are still paying for the internet connections) want to spend 30% of their bandwidth on it. The consumer is deciding what to use the bandwidth for. If they wanted to buy the carrier’s branded streaming, they would, and that would take just as much bandwidth. (And again, note the Facebook and YouTube, which also make up huge amounts of Internet traffic, aren’t getting degraded because they don’t compete with the carriers). As far as the ISP’s concerned, it’s not about the bandwidth – they’re still delivering all those Netflix packets; they’re just delaying them so much that they’re useless. It’s like your water company deciding not just how much water you can use, but which faucets you can use it from, and how much of it you’re allowed to drink, unless you buy their “branded” water.
Again, these companies were granted monopolies to spectrum and regions specifically on the agreement that they not play stupid games like this. If the cell carriers and ISP’s are suddenly big proponents of “competition” as the solution to these things (by which they mean they get to compete unfairly), then let them put up with losing their monopolies and infrastructure.
The phone companies went through this a while back, and ended up with “common carrier” laws: basically absolving the phone companies of responsibility for what is transmitted over the phone lines so long as they make no attempt to filter it. This has widely been seen as a rousing success, but for some reason we’re suddenly unwilling to apply the same logic and laws to data.
I suspect that Internet will eventually be lumped under common carrier (which is effectively net neutrality) as soon as people start realizing that they can sue their cable company for its delivery choices otherwise.
I wouldn’t be so dismissive of option #3. That is certainly the way wireless internet went. It used to be you could get unlimited data wireless plans. Now, unless you’ve been grandfathered in, mostly you can’t.
As for “fairness”, Netflix consumes no bandwidth that has not been bought and paid for by the end consumer (albeit often with an “all you can eat” deal, but it’s not like anyone was holding a gun to the ISPs heads to offer that). Having Netflix also pay for that bandwidth means that the ISPs are paid twice for the same thing. By many usual definitions of “fairness”, this is not fair.
That’s a good way of looking at it. I wouldn’t want to rule on “fairest” at this point. There may be other possibilities, too, but if so, let’s hear about them – I can’t think of any (other than “the government dictates internet services and prices,” which could easily happen in Europe but probably not in the US.)
True, but we have a tragedy of the commons going on here. It won’t persist: that common shared bandwidth will go away, and we’ll have to pay, not for the size of our pipe to the service provider’s backbone, but for our share of the service provider’s backbone. That is, data caps, etc. See enumerated list above.
What I mean to say is, you’re correct, but it doesn’t contradict tries’s point.
That’s a different point altogether. First, I doubt that their share of bandwidth is that significant (but it’s a factual question, so should have a factual answer – can anyone provide a good cite?) But the fact that it’s a competitive enterprise is very significant here, and should carefully inform the legislation. However, I doubt that will happen, for the simple reason that those who want the change would be against it, and those who want to keep net neutrality want it wholesale and won’t cooperate to refine new laws appropriately. We see this all the time, and it’s due to sound-byte politics. A politician has a hard time being reasonable because any cooperation with the “other side” to produce reasonable compromises ends up being used against him or her, by special interest groups.
I’m going to have to spend some time reading this more carefully, but ages ago companies paid extra for VPN services–I think that’s the initialism; I don’t even know what it stands for–but which was a “fast lane.” Private reserved bandwidth, for a fee.
“Virtual Private Network” or “Virtual Public Network.” Oddly, they mean the same thing, from a technical standpoint: the same techniques are used to provide either, and in either case, it’s a subset of a network that looks like the whole network to a specific set of users. The first I saw the term used was for X.25 facilities in the early 80’s, though it might predate that application.
A VPN is not a fast lane, it is an encrypted lane. It’s not necessarily faster or slower or less congestion-prone than any other connection. It just can’t be intercepted in-flight.
That aside, I don’t think anyone’s had problems with ISPs offering different service levels, so long as they are paid for by the end customer. It’s the additional fee being charged to the content provider they don’t like.
Netflix consumes 32.25% of peak downstream bandwidth in North American fixed-line networks and 28.88% of overall peak bandwidth. Youtube is 17.11% of downstream and 15.43% of overall. Facebook is 1.48% of downstream and 1.52% overall.